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Notes -
This is kind of where I'm at.
I watched the first movie and reread the first 3 books in preparation for the new movie and if nothing else I feel like Denis Villeneuve deserves credit for accurately capturing "the Vibe" of Herbert's books. Dune is big, it's weird, and it doesn't hold your hand. There are some changes I disagree with but like Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings they at least feel in line with the original work. I'm still annoyed that they dropped the line "Are you suggesting that the duke's son is an animal?" from the Reverend Mother's test in part one but so it goes.
The handling of Alia was annoying from the outlook of a purist but understandable from a cinematic perspective and in light of the compressed timeline, and as such I was broadly ok with it. In Hindsight I would have swapped the casting around with either Anya Taylor Joy or Lea Seydoux as Irulan and Florence Pugh as Lady Fenring but that's neither here nor there.
I've seen people complaining about how Stilgar is portrayed but over all I feel that it was pretty faithful. He is the true believer, and he does volunteer to let Paul kill him so that Paul can be the de jure leader of the Fedaykin and Sietch Tabr not just the de facto, to which Paul gives the famous reply "I'm not going to break my knife before a fight".
Christopher walken was wasted in the sense that they cast him in a position of authority and then didn't give him an unhinged monologue to deliver a la Poolhall Junkies, Pulp Fiction, King of New York, the Rundown, Etc... and I agree with @naraburns criticism of his characterization.
On the flip side I disagree with Nara's complaints about Fayed Rutha, wanting a fair fight (or a minimally unfair fight) feels very in character as a major motivation of his in the books is wanting to prove that he his better than everyone else, and overall I agree that "Austin Butler as psychosexual Darth Maul" was the correct call given that truly book-accurate Harkonens are not compatible with a PG-13 rating. They're less about the random killing of underlings and more cannibalism, heartplugs, futanari, and general body-horror. Pity we couldn't go full Drukhari Gladiator/Event Horizon in this bitch.
I think one of my issues here is that I was not really that fond of the book Harkonnens, who just seem pointlessly evil. I'm not sure how many have read National Lampoon's Doon, but the first scene with the Hardchargin family has the baron Hardchargin just snap kitten necks throughout his speech about taking over planet Arruckus, with nephew Filp-Rotha raging He's killing all the good kittens!' Villeneuve makes the Harkonnens weird and alien in, for instance, how they're obsessed with purity (no body hair etc.) but in a fundamentally unpure way (the Baron's constant oil baths and so on) and, as said, more suggests the more perverted and atrocious stuff than focuses on it, and it makes them perfectly suitable villains for a movie like this.
Also re: Stilgar, I think the point is that Stilgar's a strongly religious guy who has not only expected the arrival of his Messiah for his entire life and (in the movie) been mocked by it by the /r/atheist Northerners, and now he's really seeing the Messiah come and genuinely do all the Messiah shit and demonstrating superhuman qualities. Of course he's awestruck! He should be! Within the context of this movie's timeframe, Stilgar is right and Chani is wrong.
This is the problem with cutting down on the BG ninja shit and having Paul's killing of Jamis happen in the last film and be relatively understated. When Stilgar seems to flip early on in Part Two, it's a bit less impactful.
In the books, Paul's defeat (and perceived humiliation) of Jamis alone was shocking to the Fremen. Jessica's POV hammers just how fucking strange (and terrifying) a creature trained like Paul appears, even when he's reluctant to kill.
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In the book in his duel with Paul, he's got a drugged blade and a hidden poison needle. He also accuses Paul of "treachery" when he realizes that Paul's crysknife is naturally acidic--to which Paul responds dryly, "Only a little acid to counter the soporific on the Emperor's blade." Feyd-Rautha's response is rage:
Feyd-Rautha doesn't seem to want fair fights, even minimally. He just wants to prove that he's better than everyone else, by winning by whatever means necessary. He even gloats about it (quietly) to Paul during the fight:
And yet from only a page before we have...
His whole thing through the rest of the book is that he's a striver, wanting to prove that he is better and more capable than his uncle and older brother, and thus take the throne. See also the bit about wanting to give the Atreides slave in gladiator pit a proper burial.
There's also the element of the Bene Gesserit wishing to preserve that genetic line, given the short time provided one can't put too fine a point on that, one must show him as somewhat admirable.
To explain the Bene Gesserit wanting to preserve the genetic line, you need only show some good quality; his competence at restoring spice production would be enough.
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